Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

The sales and marketing industry is flooded with events, conferences, web events, you name it. You could make it your full time job just trying to attend every one of them. Last year I was invited to attend the TOPO Summit in San Francisco – the inaugural event from TOPO. I’ve known the founders, Scott Albro and Craig Rosenberg, as clients, industry partners and friends for years. These two guys know sales and marketing and I figured I’d most likely come back with something valuable. New events are hard to pull off. My expectation was a 100 or so people, with some decent speakers. What I got was a huge surprise. The attendance was way beyond expectations, the speakers were phenomenal and the content was brilliant. What did I take away? “Account Based Everything”. My interview of Craig below elaborates on the topic, and I look forward to attending the event this year, finding some more nuggets, and meeting great people.

@damphoux: First, give us the elevator pitch of what is Account-Based Everything?

@funnelholic: Account-Based Everything is the coordination of personalized marketing, sales development, sales, and customer success efforts to drive engagement with, and conversion of, a targeted set of accounts. The principal focus is on driving the full lifecycle revenue chain from marketing through sales and into customer success/account management. As a by-product, account-based alignment extends across the entire organization, including finance, product development, engineering, and the executive team. That is Account-Based Everything.

@damphoux:Green Leads has been doing Everything Account Based for years, why move the word "Everything" to the back end? Is that just to make it new and different?

@funnelholic: There are a couple layers to your question, so let me tackle these one by one:

Why Account-Based Everything now?

Account-based methods are not new. Integrated marketing campaigns have been around for 30+ years and target account selling has been around since salespeople started selling to big businesses. There was a change though - in the early 2000s, the digital marketing revolution (e.g., Google AdWords, marketing automation, etc.) shifted B2B marketing focus to industrial-strength demand generation engines capable of delivering massive numbers of leads at scale. Now the pendulum is swinging back to account-based methods. There are three major drivers behind this shift:

Improved Economics -Advanced sales and marketing organizations have realized that specific types of accounts drive the most compelling CAC and LTV. The most common example of this is the shift towards the enterprise.

Market Dynamics - For many companies, the inbound, volume and velocity models have peaked and they must now pursue targeted, account-based models to drive growth. At a certain point, marketing just can’t increase inbound lead volume growth rates anymore.

Proven Account-Based Results - The modern version of the account-based movement is still young, but early adopters are reporting that programs are yielding impressive results particularly with respect to deal-size metrics such as ACV and LTV.

@funnelholic: Like everyone else, we started with Account-Based Marketing. The analysts began researching ABM programs and we identified a significant issue - organizations that struggled with account-based programs lacked cross-functional alignment across marketing, sales, sales dev, and customer success. There’s an organization-wide commitment to mobilize efforts against a key set of target accounts. So we decided to create a new category – Account-Based Everything (ABE). It’s not just marketing, it’s everything.

Finally, Everything Account-Based versus Account-Based Everything It’s the same thing…I was just replacing the term “marketing”. I actually like “Everything Account-Based”…I gotta find a way to use that too.

@damphoux: For years the demand gen world has had the Inbound Marketing/Outbound Marketing debate, and you know I'm a staunch Outbound Mafia member. Where do you see Inbound/Outbound in the Account Based Everything model?

@funnelholic: There are a couple things to think about with regards to inbound/outbound:

Outbound SDRs are becoming account-based SDRs – Account-Based SDRs are assigned a set of target accounts. Their primary focus is outbound but if inbound comes in from those target accounts – they will follow-up. In the old pure outbound model, they could get credit for meetings they set from outbound prospecting. That said, they will still spend 75% of their time on outbound.

At the end of the day, most account-based demand will come from outbound…so you might say the “outbound mafia” is alive, well, and about to thrive.

@damphoux:There are Marketers and there are prospecting Sales Development Reps, how do you see each operating in an Account Based Everything model?

@funnelholic: That’s the beautiful thing about Account-Based Everything – they work together. Our research has found the fastest path to launching orchestrated campaigns and driving strong results from them is to focus on marketing-sales development orchestration. Typically, organizations currently executing marketing-SDR orchestrated campaigns realize a 30-50% lift in ‘meetings set’ at target accounts, with some organizations reporting a 100% increase.

Orchestration is the sequenced coordination of different activities, programs and campaigns across marketing, sales development, sales and customer success to drive engagement with multiple stakeholders in target accounts. In the case of marketing and SDR orchestration, marketing will run simultaneous campaigns (account-based ads, direct mail etc) while SDRs run their outbound cadence. It works.

I'll be attending the TOPO Sales Summit on April 7-8 in San Francisco. If you are a sales, sales development, sales operations, sales enablement, or even marketing leader, you should attend. The agenda looks amazing and the attendees are basically everyone in SaaS.

I'll be attending the TOPO Sales Summit the first week of April and am looking forward to hearing from the sales and marketing trenches. The information and networking that will flow at this conference, is unprecedented in our industry. If you think about sales, marketing, demand gen, inside sales, sales development or pipeline, this is a must-attend event!

I've been friends with TOPO Co-Founder Craig Rosenberg (@funnelholic) for 10 years and thought we would have some fun leading up to the event by asking him 20 questions. I gave him a caveat; he can only answer them in 3 sentences or less. For the most part he complied, but in typical Craig form, he had to use sentance #4 here and there.

Tell us about the Summit?

The first annual TOPO SalesSummit will take place April 7-8 at Pier 27 in San Francisco. We will bring together over 600 sales leaders responsible for more than $50B in revenue. We've recruited an amazing lineup of speakers from companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Box.

People - the best sales leaders in the world will be attending and speakingSpecificity- these amazing speakers will provide real specifics of how to actually executeTopics that matter - Real topics on how to run your sales org. No fluff contentFun - I am the Funnelholic, it has to be fun

There are so many conferences, why did you decide to do this?

The modern sales machine is scalable, efficient, predictable, and innovating at hyper-speed. The time is now for a conference that focuses on these innovations and how organizations are executing them.

What’s the most interesting topic?

They are all interesting but I would say our keynote should be fun for everyone. We have Jeff Ma, who was the leader of the MIT card counting team featured in the book and movie, Bringing Down the House.

The speakers are heavy on Practitioners, the people that fight in the trenches all day long, why not a bunch of industry experts?

We believe in specificity and the best people to deliver specific details are people who are doing it every day. Practitioners and industry experts know their stuff, but we wanted to go deep with the people on the front lines.

How did you get all these amazing speakers to participate?

We have spent two years studying high growth companies and building relationships with the leaders who run these organizations. I won’t say it was easy, but we had a pretty good idea on where to go first.

What’s TOPO?

We are a research, advisory, and consulting firm that studies the fastest growing companies on earth. We then analyze that data and help our customers grow revenue faster

Why did you start TOPO?

We were consulting to figure out what we wanted to do next. Every customer, whether they were turning to us for demand gen, sales development, or sales, wanted to know one thing: What are the best companies in the world doing? Boom. Topo was born

What are you doing with the Funnelholic?

It’s still alive. I blog on it when I want to have some fun but try to do guest posts as much as I can.

What are the biggest trends in sales and marketing?

Account Based Everything. PERIOD. 90% of our inquiries have been about moving to account based something.

What’s the biggest mistake you see marketers make?

They buy technology ahead of defining strategy and process. This was an issue in the marketing automation craze - everyone bought software before having a clear definition of what they were trying to do. It's happening again with the Account Based Movement - people are buying applications and announcing they are now "account-based", but they aren't.

What’s the biggest mistake you see sales making?

Focusing the majority of their attention on the front of the sales cycle (demand gen) and the end (forecasting and closing). True, scalable revenue growth requires attention and optimization in the middle.

People don’t buy Legos; they buy the ability to build the Millennium Falcon. Stephanie Buscemi from Salesforce told me that one and it’s so spot-on, I don’t know what to do with myself.

What’s your favorite sales book?

I read them all and find something of value in all of them. If I have to choose, my old boss Stu Silverman told me to read Ogilvy on Advertising and it changed me forever.

What’s your favorite marketing book?

Same as above – I read a lot. Ardath Albee is my favorite marketing writer of all time. But I’ll give the nod to a recent one, Carlos Hidalgo’s Driving Demand.

What’s your one piece of advice for marketers?

You've preeched it with b2b appointment setting for years -- it's all about the Account Based Marketing. Segment your target accounts and get into them. All of them. The account based movement is the final piece to real alignment with sales. What is it you say? "Selling doesn't start until the conversation starts." Open the doors and start the conversations.

Famous last words?

See you at the Summit. Anyone who mentions this blog post gets a huge hug. – Click here to learn more and sign up: TOPO Sales Summit.

Ok, my favorite question when inteviewing for the blog -- the Curry question. It started years ago for reasons unknown, but it lives on forever. What's your favorite Curry?

Ha! I am going green but I love them all. Thanks everyone! See you at the TOPO Sales SummitSummit, April 7-8th in San Francisco

Trish Bertuzzi and I have known each other for quite some time now. We've been on stage together. We've been with clients together. Green Leads' b2b appointment setting team has even been a client of the Bridge Group. My opinion of Trish as a sales development expert is beyond what I could deliver in this article.

Just last week I attended her launch party for her new book, The Sales Development Playbook (amazon link) and she fielded a few questions that pointed directly to the underlying theme of the book, that sales development is all about the people. Recruiting, onboarding, motivating, retention, managing, and the managers.

As I picked up the book a few weeks ago, I thought I would pick up some cool tips and tricks as well as some sage advice. What I got was re-enforcement of something I always knew, but never formalized. As it pertains to a sales development team - your people are your only true asset.

When I called her to tell her I finished the book and that I was loving the attention on the people, she shared "In most of the books I have read about business, they focused on process and methodology. I wanted to do something different by focusing in large part on the people. To ride a current social media trend let me put it this way #PeopleMatter."

People is not the only take away though. There is a ton of sales development goodness. Other topics that rang my bell were around quota setting, measurements and technologies. And the contributing industry experts tie each topic to reality.

If you've just started in the profession, or if you are a long time practitioner, it's a must read for anyone in the inside sales/sales development/lead gen industry.

My good buddy and best man, Dave, has been commissioner of the same Fantasy Football league for over 12 years and a few years ago asked if I was interested in taking one of the empty slots. My obsessive-compulsive, statistically driven, multi-scenario-challenged gaming mind was intrigued. Could I possibly put together a team that could beat other experienced teams week in and week out? Even if the matchup is one-sided on paper?

Sounds simple, but here's the deal. I'm more of an owner and less of a coach, so I did what I do best. I hired Lenny, a co-worker at the time and a kick-ass coach, and learned from someone who knows more about Fantasy Football than I do and still enjoy the results. Now three seasons later, Lenny is gone and I won last year's season. This year opened with a tight match against Dave, and it came down to the last two players--he crushed me. But I'm a coach.

Tips to learn from Fantasy Football when building awesome inside sales teams:

Be a coach. Understand your team and their challenges, week in and week out.

Understand the rules. If you know what scores you points you'll make better decisions. Ask the commissioner (your boss) if it's unclear.

Learn from the pros. We read Fantasy blogs; we also read B2B sales and marketing blogs.

Look for raw talent that requires the least maintenance.

Find the studs that, head to head, will overperform every week.

Think about your deficiencies and hire accordingly.

If your team needs adjusting, make the shifts. It might mean cutting a player, or drafting a new one, or moving someone up from the bench. Think big picture.

Don't fall in love with a lineup. If you need to let a player go, cut your losses.

Track the stats. Every stat -- even the ones you aren't sure are valuable. They will be someday.

Think Superbowl. Don't forget the long-term play is to win.

Lastly, have fun. Every day. Have fun. If you and your team are enjoying your jobs, you'll always make the playoffs and be in a position to win!

ps. I do have Tom Brady in both my leagues this year. Maybe I should take some lessons from Belichick?

Google has figured out a neat way to take over the conference call industry. They just added their Google Hangout invite link to EVERY Google Calendar invite that you schedule. It's listed above the meeting notes, so if your not paying attention and you've got GoToMeeting or WebEx or Join.me bridge numbers and links in the body of your invite, expect a few people to click the Hangout link and ignore the rest. I've done it twice in a week!

Your cancel and reschedule rate will soar through the roof!

There is a manual work around and an admin level work around. The manual work around is simple, just remember to click Remove as you are creating the meeting. The admin level fix is that they can disable this feature through the calendar settings page in the Admin console.

Note: Hangout video calls are only added if the event creator has an active Google+ profile.

Don't get a No Show or Cancel or Reschedule if you're using Google Calendar. Pay attention and click Remove, or switch your meetings over to Google Hangout. Either way works for me.

I just listened to Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime," and it made me smile, tap my feet, rock my head, especially with the banjo player huffing and puffing into the jug. Love it!

...then BOOM! The song is over and I remembered all the times I heard inside sales reps complain that "It's summer, nobody's working."

Folks, that's one of the biggest myths in lead gen. In fact, it's so twisted that some hidden benefits of summer are shrowded. Let's take a look.

Yes, most people take vacation time in the summer. I do to. That said, how many vacations can one take? They can't be gone all summer. In fact, some very important things happen because of vacations:

Desk time - Most people planning vacations plan some time in the office (ie: not travelling) prior to and immediately after so that they can get their ducks in a row and return hitting the ground running. That is more time for them to be at their desks picking up calls, or paying attention to an email inbox that is organized. Take advantage of it.

Responders - "I'll be out of the office until Monday, July 21. In an emergency you can call my cell ###-###-####, otherwise, you can contact June, my assistant at ###-###-####, or John, my senior team member at john@emailme.com". Nuggets: The prospect's cell number, the assistant's name and number, and his trusted underling's email address. Use them.

Scheduling - It can get dicy trying to pick a date, sure, but use it as an opportunity to book a meeting in close -- to set some urgency.

Lighten the mood - It's always a challenge to find the common thread in a call to make the prospect feel comfortable listening to the business end of a conversation, what better common thread than "Oh, vacation, I just got back from the Cape, what are you planning?". People buy from people.

This Thursday, starting at 11ET, InsideSales.com his hosting the Sales Acceleration Summit. There will be 80 speakers with topics ranging from Inside Sales and Enterprise Sales to Marketing, Management and Motivation.

Join us tomorrow for as many sessions as you can squeeze in. You can register for free.

Featured speakers include:

Matt Dixon, Author of The Challenger Sale

Steve Young, Pro Football Hall of Fame Inductee

Josh James, Founder & CEO, Domo

Jill Konrath, Author of Selling to Big Companies

Grant Cardone, Author of Sell or be Sold

Ken Krogue, President, InsideSales.com

I'll be talking Marketing Goodness with Thomas Oldroyd of InsideSales.com. I'll be focusing on how sales professionals need to start thinking like CMOs.

If you are a Chief Marketing Officer, or report to one, or aspire to be one, you MUST attend dreamforce. Period. I would not normally make such a blanket statement, but I don't want anyone to miss the point of this article.

This week, I was able to speak at dreamforce for data.com, and shared in the frenzy with 130,000 other attendees. The benefits of being here are endless:

Technology - Aisles and aisles of vendors selling everything from big data (impressed by Tableau), to sales productivity tools such as InsideSales.com, which Green Leads just implemented.

Learn - Study new marketing techniques. Face it, event marketing is one of the largest challenges of a marketer. Come see what's working.

Team - Nothing more rewarding than a CMO seeing their team enjoying the conference and learning new ideas and techniques.

Network - Meeting new people, prospects and network contacts. Walking around I had a bunch of followers introduce themselves. Networking goodness!

POV - Explore all the branding and point of view. My POV guru buddy, Dave Peterson of PlayBigger told me yesterday, was to just experience the show and absorb. Learned a ton.

Listen - Some incredible marketers on stage. The list is too long to name, but Marissa Mayer of Yahoo was killer.

Customers - Setting up client/partner visits. I could have filled my week with nothing but client visits. Great lunch with Steve Lilly of Ziff Davis! B2B Goodness.

Reunions - I walked into Moscone West and five minutes after I got my badge I met someone I worked with 13 years ago.

Demand Gen - Find new business. In my particular case, there is nothing better than meeting the VP of Marketing at a booth and them saying "The show is good, lots of tire kickers though." and then when she asks what I do, go into how "Green Leads weeds through all the tire kickers to find you active decision makers."

Party - Green Day, Blondie, Huey Lewis and the News. Every bar and restaurant is overflowing with sales, marketers and geeks.

Exercise - Yes, exercise, if you consider walking a few miles a day exercise. Being on your feet all day works the core. It's exercise!

Press - They are all here. Take advantage of it.

Vendors - Odds are that if your marketing vendors are here. Check in with them.

Exhibit - If you target sales, marketing or developers, you have to be here!

Having just kicked off, the SiriusDecisions Summit in London will be spanning two days with tons of marketing and sales goodness. I'll be adding notable thoughts, quotes, and tweets to this article during the two days, so come back!

@RichardEldh: The relationship with our clients and our prospects is as much digital as it is face to face, if not more.

As a business owner, I manage my tasks, take care of clients, look at my numbers, work hard, attend to quality, work with my team...you name it. Does that sound much different than a sales or marketing professional? Tasks, Clients, Quotas, Energy, Perfection, Peers.

You all own your own businesses! Congrats.

So now that you own your own business, where can you go for some advice and inspiration?

This week is the innagural issue of Owner Magazine. Owner is the brainchild of Chris Brogan, a leading speaker, author and blogger focused on digital business.

Chris and I were sitting down last week talking about the first issue of Owner. His passion for ALL things makes you walk away from any interaction with a "can do" feeling and a smile on your face. His passion for his new online magazine launch is one I share and hope you will too.

"The concept of an Owner is simple," says Chris. "It is for someone who seeks to improve worth by growing capabilities and connections. You can be the CEO of your cubicle as long as you’re accepting responsibility for your intentions to grow your abilities and your network. But more so, you’re likely an entrepreneurial spirit, either helming your own organization, or just about to leap out into the fray and make your own path. That’s who we’ve created Owner magazine to serve."